Farah Fayed

Tuesday, December 06, 2011

"Uncle Nashaat"

A feature documentary I edited in September 2011.
The film screened in Dubai International Film Festival had Afac too...

Sunday, November 20, 2011

TVC Ministry of Tourism

Here the TVC I edited for the Lebanese Ministry of Tourism. Produced by Origami Prod.

http://www.origamiprod.com/ministerdutourism.php

Saturday, November 12, 2011

"February 19" is a film I edited in 2011.
It's an impossible love story; only a wall in that train separates them; and still, those old lovers couldn't cross the borders of their own cabins, to join each other, on February 19, the day they choose to meet again after a long separation. A symbolic choice the director Tamara Stepanyan did in a silent film. Or barely silent since there is one sentence. Oh and all the other sounds that have their own stories too. (The train, the blasts, the music...)
The audience just loved the film. Here's the link for the trailer (edited by the director) and below the synopsis:

http://vimeo.com/31951854

Screened in Dubai International Film Festival...

A train between Yerevan and Tbilisi.
Anna and Alex.
And a wall. A cold, white wall.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Colorist

2009

É Color Correction of the documentary “1958” directed by Ghassan Salhab

65min - Digi Beta - AVID Symphony

É Conforming of the essay film “Everyday Madonna” directed by Nadim Asfar 45min - confounds formats - AVID Symphony

É Conforming of the feature “Qu’est-ce qui se passe ?” (“what’s going on?”) directed by Jocelyne Saab - 1h30min – Red workflow FCP

É Color Correction and conforming of the documentary “12 Angry Lebanese” directed by Zeina Daccache. The documentary talks about her theater experience with the prisoners of Roumieh prison in Lebanon - Djinn House

É Editing and Color correction of TV commercials for the following agencies Leo Burnett, Saatchi & Saatchi, Grey Worldwide, Horizon Draft FCB shot with Red or 35mm - The Post Office

Websites mentioning films I edited or directed

Lion d'Or award winning in Cannes International Advertising Festival for Khede Kasra Campain created by Leo Burnett Beirut.
http://www.coloribus.com/adsarchive/ambient-online-design-casestudy/hariri-foundation-khede-kasra-13352655/

CNN Asian Pacific Award for feature documentary won by Beirut Diaries, truth, lies and videos

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4n1ok_mai-masri-wins-best-documentary-awa_shortfilms

http://www.asiapacificscreenacademy.com/apsa-archive/nominees-winners-archive/?nomyear=17&nomcat=34&winner=45&country=147&Submit=Submit

Beirut Diaries in other festival brochures
http://www.med-screen.com/files/berlinale.pdf (go to page 10..)

http://www.worldcat.org/title/beirut-diaries-33-days/oclc/317632903

"Like water, like air" a documentary I directed
http://www.acdir.net/acdir/Films/Film_print_en.aspx?f_id=2755

"Adab al soujoun" broadcast Al Jazeera, produced by Dark Side Production - Beirut, to Hot Spot Films - Dubai
http://www.darksidetv.com/ourreel.html?4

A short movie I directed shown at SAFF (Sydney Arab Film Festival)
http://www.mcnt.org.au/documents/August2009/inthistogether.pdf

"Beyrouth, un point deux vues" by Zoe in the context of "Beyrouth, je t'aime" exhibition
http://wn.com/souheil_semaan_photography?orderby=rating

Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Non-ID Palestinian Refugees

"Like water, like air" is a documentary I directed about the "Bidoun" ("without" in Arabic) or "NON-ID" palestinan refugees in Lebanon. We count more than 3000 families who are not registered to UNRWA due to the lack of evidence of being palestinians. Each family has its own story. They came to Lebanon without papers due to war condition, their papers are outdated and could not be updated or some employers burnt their papers in order to abuse them... All the non-ID are in a very delicate situation now and need some political attention. Their lives are a continuous fall into misery because neither the Lebanese government nor any international authority recognize them. If the Lebanese police catchs a non-ID Palestinian because he has no paper to present, they would put him in prison for 3 months. Then, because of the conflict with Israel, the Lebanese authorities cannot send him back to Palestine so they release him again and leave him inside Lebanese territories where he fears to be caught again. This film presented four families cases to lawyers and deputees in order to show their cases, what would help D.R.C. (Danish Refugees Center) improve their legal situation.
However, the Lebanese government created one year later a comittee to survey those families and help them live better as non-ID palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

Friday, August 26, 2011

The biggest oak of Lebanon in a deserted village....

This is a documentary about the memory of a village from the point of view of the very few villagers still related to this village. "The oak of Ein Trez" is a 26minutes documentary I directed for the program "Memory of a Location" produced by Firehorse Film Productions and broadcast by Future News.

Filmmaker Ziad Doueiry

This is a documentary I directed in 2008 about the life and passion for cinema of the well-known Lebanese filmmaker Ziad Doueiry ( West Beyrouth and Lila dit ca ). It was part of a 26minutes program called "with passion" produced by Firehorse Film Production and broadcast by Future News.

Agriculture empowerment in Lebanon; director and producer

Here is Tercom corporate project; a number of short films were presenting Tercom, an agriculture empowerment project in all Lebanese regions in 2008. I produced, directed and edited them. It was shown in private screenings and there were private distribution to promote local traditional and agricultural products.

One of the 6 films was not directed by me but by Hussein Gharib. It was for another organisation that was in collaboration with Tercom : Nowara, a woman empowerment project in Lebanese regions.

The film is available on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/12518567

directed by Hussein Gharib, produced and edited by me.

In 2011, Nowara decided to give awards to Lebanese entrepreneur women and wished to show films for the awards event. So they asked me as a Lebanese woman to direct those 4 short films as a winner award presentation.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Beirut Diaries - CNN Pacific Award and others

"Beirut Diaries, truth, lies and videos" directed by Mai Masri

This feature documentary I edited received awards from all around the world. One of them is the CNN Asian Pacific Award for the Best Feature Documentary.

Protestants - Hindus - Mormons - Bahais : The religious societies

Four documentaries I edited from 2004 to 2006 during the program "Religious Societies" on Al Jazeera. Extracts are available here

-Hindus (52min - directed by Pierre Salloum)

-Mormons (52min - directed by Pierre Salloum)

-Bahais (52min - directed by Pierre Abou Jawdeh)

-Protestants (52min - directed by Philip Bajjali)

These films, produced by Lebanon's Firehorse Film Productions, have a spiritual feel. They required a careful editorial balance that showed how we can inverse the degrees of insanity and spirituality to achieve the understanding of those religions. Editing them was also an informative experience for me: I learned that Kuwait has Protestants, Lebanon has Bahais and Jordan has Mormons, which I did not know before.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Monotheist Druses

Another documentary I edited in 2004 about Druze Religion and Druze practitioners in Lebanon.
Broadcast by Al Jazeera (52 min - Digital Beta).
The importance was for a spiritual mood, the rhythm was relatively slow and we had time to put silence if we wanted in the scenes.

Literature of the Camps : Ansar and Khiam

In 2004, I edited two documentaries for the program "Adab Al Soujoun" which was broadcast on Al Jazeera and produced by Hot Spot Films.
Both films dealt with literature written inside prison camps in Lebanon. The poetry and texts written inside the camps were an act of defiance and an act of resistance against the Lebanese and Israeli forces who guarded them - papers and pens were not permitted inside the prisons at that time. In editing these films, I tried to reflect the courage and determination of those prisoners of war.

Although on the same subject, each film had a specific mood. As editor, I took care to listen to the characters difficult and profound experience, and to create moments of silence but also let the film's movement take its own space. They are, after all, films about resistance. I really was affected by their experiences and I tried to structure the images with a certain movement and a discomforting silence.

Camp Al Khiam (52 min - Digital Beta)

Camp Ansar (52 min - Digital Beta)

"12 Angry Lebanese" Coloring Roumieh Prison

"12 Angry Lebanese" is a documentary directed by Zeina Daccache. The documentary talks about a theater experience with the prisoners of Roumieh prison in Lebanon known as Catharsis Drama Therapy. It was edited by Michèle Tyan (Djinn House Production) in 2009.

All rights reserved ©

I did the Color Correction and Conforming of this 78 minutes film on Avid Media Composer.

Technically, a few masks were added to lighten or darken some areas with an animation for correcting a movement if necessary. I also changed the color temperature of some ranges to neutralize or valorize them.

The way I thought of adding coloring value to the film was very delicate. The characters were personalized and differenciated and the mood had to follow the feeling that has a clear variation during the film.
Telling a crime that I did in front of the camera is surely a very tough moment so the coloring language would be well contrasted to enlarge the difference between clearness and darkness.
At contrary while gaining back one's self estime with joyfull moments and meditating moments, the language would leave the grey scale and soften the colors with each others to give a feeling of lightness, of softness.
Talking with the therapist and the others about my interior sufferings during a therapy session has different levels and differents dynamics for color correction. This scene had a very important trust element and for this the light had to be clear and soft, but the blacks were very sharp and blocked at some point. Finding homogeneity is necessary though. So when you see too much differences in one same location from a scene to another, the coloring risks to be visible and this was something to avoid. So at some point I had to balance it all.

Après la guerre, c'est toujours la guerre.

"Après la guerre, c'est toujours la guerre." Documentary - 80 min - by Samir Abdallah (author of The siege and Writers of the Frontiers)

Extract 1

Extract 2

Extract 3

Projected in the 3 Luxembourgs Cinema in Paris, "After the war, it’s still the war" is a documentary shot in Lebanon during July 2006 war with Israel.
The director is a French militant who came to Lebanon with a delegation of militants during the war to show solidarity to the Lebanese people. The film talks about a newspaper launched by secular leftist well known journalists who will publish their first edition on the last day of war with a questionning manchette on what's after the war.

[Coproduced by L’yeux ouverts, Vidéo de Poche and Cinésoumoud]
All rights reserved ©

Pages